Southeastern Iowa counties are gearing up to recount more than 414,000 ballots in Iowa's 1st Congressional District race where less than 0.2 percent of the votes cast separate the candidates.

Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks leads Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan by 801 votes, according to canvassed results from the Nov. 5 election posted to the Iowa Secretary of State's website . The 20-county district includes Iowa City, Davenport and rural Southeast Iowa.

Incumbent Miller-Meeks has declared victory, calling the lead insurmountable. Bohannan announced Nov. 14 her campaign requested a recount in what it called a razor-thin race, and it would accept the results no matter the outcome.

This will be the second time in three elections that Miller-Meeks' tally will head to a recount. In 2020, she won by just six votes over Democrat Rita Hart after recounts and late-arriving mail and provisional ballots winnowed Miller-Meeks' initial 282-vote election night lead.

Because the margin of victory separating the candidates is less than 1 percent of the total number of votes counted in the race, the state — not the candidate asking for the recount — covers the cost.

Several county auditors in the district said Tuesday they do not expect large differences from canvassed tallies in their counties.

"I think it'll depend on the way the recount board wants to recount the ballots," Clinton County Auditor Eric Van Lancker said. "If they decide just to do a machine recount, I expect very little changes. A hand recount, I would think from what we've seen in the past, a change of 20 would be a lot."

Nationwide, recounts in statewide elections seldom change the outcome. An analysis by the nonpartisan elections research organization FairVote found that out of the 6,929 statewide general elections in the United States between 2000 and 2023, there were 36 statewide recounts. Of those recounts, just three changed the outcome.

All three reversals occurred when the initial margin was less than 0.06 percent of all votes cast for the top two candidates.

Where are counties at in the recount process?

In Iowa, a three-member recount board in each of the district's 20 counties will recount ballots cast in the race. The board is made up of a representative of each candidate and a third agreed-upon member. The chief district judge appoints the third member if the campaigns can't agree.

Recount boards make all decisions on how to recount votes in consultation with county attorneys and written guidance provided in advance from the Iowa Secretary of State's Office.

Several county auditors Tuesday were waiting for a decision on that third recount board member. Campaigns have until the end of the week to select someone before a judge steps in to appoint one.

A few counties already had scheduled dates to start recounting ballots.

Muscatine County's recount board will start counting ballots at 8 a.m. today, Muscatine County Auditor Tibe Vander Linden said. Over 19,000 ballots were cast in the race in Muscatine County, and Vander Linden said she expects the recount to take one to two days.

Clinton County's recount board plans to meet at 8:30 a.m. Saturday to start counting ballots, Van Lancker said.

Recount by machine or hand?

Guidance from the Iowa Secretary of State's Office emailed to county auditors Tuesday afternoon indicated that it's the office's opinion that recounts should be done either by-hand or by-machine, but not by both.

Such a hybrid approach would entail running ballots through a central count machine and then counting by hand any not read by that machine, said the office's spokesperson, Ashley Hunt, in an email.

Some boards used that approach during the 2020 recount.

"It is our official guidance under §47.1(1) that it is not legal to conduct a hybrid recount," Hunt wrote. "A county could conduct a hand count of every ballot, and/or run every ballot through the machine, but cannot do a combination of the two methods. The recount board may only consider ballots that were counted on Election Day."

"It is important to clarify that the recount board makes any and all decisions, and auditors and board members who have questions about procedures should consult their county attorneys," Hunt added.

In Clinton County, Van Lancker said he shared the email with the Clinton County recount board so it can make the decision on how to count the ballots. Two of the three board members were at the 2020 recount, Van Lancker said, when the board decided to use a hybrid method.

Auditors hope to wrap up by Thanksgiving

Johnson and Scott counties have the most ballots to recount — about 88,000 votes were counted in the race in Scott County and about 84,900 in Johnson County.

Both counties were still waiting Tuesday afternoon for a third recount board member to be chosen, their county auditors said.

Scott County Auditor Kerri Tompkins told the Scott County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday she expects the recount to be a lengthy process. If the recount board opts to do a hand-recount, Tompkins said, her office estimated it could take about 150 hours. If the board goes with a machine count, she said she expects it to take less than half that.

"It's a lot of time, but we expect to be able to get through it," Tompkins said.

Recounts must be completed by Dec. 2, when Iowa's state board of canvassers must certify the statewide election results.

Tompkins said her office is "very confident in our results."

"I do not have any concerns with any of our machines, so I'm confident where our results are," Tompkins said.

Lee County Auditor Denise Fraise was more blunt.

"Our machines ran smooth as glass," Fraise said. "And Mariannette Miller-Meeks won by quite a bit in Lee County. I really think it's a waste of time and resources."

Fraise said Lee County does not have a central count machine, so it'll likely take about two days to feed nearly 16,000 ballots through its machines.

"We're all trying to get caught up from the election, now we've got to give up two days to do this," Fraise said. "... I'm not usually this negative, but this is very irritating to us. I just can't see it changing the outcome."

House Republicans deploying election observers

A U.S. House Republicans program is sending observers to counties in Iowa's 1st District for the recount, according to a news release from U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wisc., chair of the committee of House Administration.

The committee pays for expenses for Republican observers, according to its website .

"We must make sure that every legal ballot is counted accurately," Steil said in a statement. "This Congress, we recruited a record number of Congressional Election Observers and continue to run the most robust program in the history of the House to ensure fairness and accuracy in our election results."